Archives - Digital Culture
08/20/2004
Apple released new iSync 1.5 which was really powerful to support a lot of new devices (bluetooth-enabled). In my case, I could synchronize my nokia 6600 with Powerbook G4 through bluetooth connection, just one click to sync all my contacts and calendar with my address book and iCal. How amazing it is to me for manage my personal contacts and appointments. Also I could upload all of my phone-camera pix to my iPhoto albume by using bluetooth too!
11 Comments
06/ 8/2004
A lot of confirms from Chinese Bloggers confirmed that Chinese Wikipedia was blocked in China. Through my refer system, I saw a dutch weblog "wikipeida benutzer" quote my previous post. Although I couldn't understand what he/she was talking about, I find a good link from his blog: Chinese Build Free Net Encyclopedia. After some of interviews with active contributors in Chinese wikipedia, the article point out why wikipedia was not blocked in China at that time, and predicted potential risks of blocking by Chinese censors.
One reason why Chinese Wikipedia has not been blocked by Chinese censors may be the site's insistence that all entries reflect a neutral point of view, a policy that defines all Wikipedia versions in other languages. The neutral point of view is intended to avoid editing wars between contributors competing to impose their interpretation of various subjects on other readers.
As Andrew Lih said:
"The site is not blocked en masse at the site level because its not obviously pro or against anything because of the neutral point of view policy,"
Another reason Chinese Wikipedia has not been blocked by Chinese censors may be its low profile and relatively small group of regular contributors. As the site gets more attention and attracts more contributors, Chinese censors may decide to block access to the site, giving an indication of how much exposure censors are willing to tolerate for a site like this,
I saw plenty of debates on
shizhao's
comment page (who is a pioneer Chinese wikipedian and a administrator of Chinese wikipedia), Some Taiwan contributors complained his arbitrary deletion on their works, most of them are caused by sensitive topics such as:
definition of Republic of China,
Taiwan's WHO bid etc. Actually here is a big culture conflict between Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. There just only one version of Chinese wikipedia called "zhongwen" wikipeida, its include both two kinds of Chinese characters. So it's mean no major Chinese character was preferred on site. The problem is mainland Chinese and Taiwan Chinese have different practice to write in Chinese. It's kinda of complicate.
Another debate wave is on the political issue, These topics easily drive contributors lost their patients. Obviously, at this point, contributors (even visitors) were missing one of most important principle in wikipedia: Reflect neutral point of view.
Wikipedia is a very attractive project, I do appreciate they efforts on thousands of Chinese entries. I hope to see that more and more contributors join this project to represent professional information, But if people are focusing on debates to define what kind of major Chinese should be used in Chinese wikipeida, The project couldn't widely participate by others.
23 Comments
06/ 4/2004
Shizhao (one of the most active Chinese wikipedia contributor) had post a news on CNblog.org was asking bloggers to visit Chinese verison of wikipedia see if it was blocked or not, through those comments, It's seems that wikipedia was blocked in most of location and network. So far, Beijing, Shanghai, these major City's network can't visit zh.wikipedia.org.
Since this is very senstive period that 15 years anniverary of Tiananmeng affair. Chinese Goverment is reinforce their regulation over internet to control the senstive topic about Tiananmeng and "6.4". I hope it's not a long-term block for wikipedia in China.
Update: ITworld article - Chinese censors block access to Wikipedia
29 Comments
05/27/2004
I saw some debates on a Free Culture review from Financial Times Chinese Edition in my friends blog. The translator had translated "Free Culture" to a misunderstanding Chinese name "免费文化". I'm not a pickly person but the name was totally misguide people to undersrand what is Free Culture. It forced me to worte a Email to clarify it. I'm not sure FT will correct the name if they accpect my suggestion. the only thing I can do is post my Email over here to correct it in virtual.
To Financial Times Chinese Edition Representative:
Refer to the article: 免费世界堕入艰难时代
I read this article translate from Mr. 李功文. It makes me feel incomprehensibly because of Mr. Li's unacceptable translations! How could this happen to post this misunderstanding translation article in Financial Times! Free Culture not means "免费文化". From the book and the wide well-known concept, we all understand that "free Culture" meaning should be translated to "自由文化". There is a big difference between "自由文化" and "免费文化" in Chinese understanding.
We met Lawrence Lessig (author of "Free Culture") a month ago in "China Digital Future" conference in UC Berkeley; after his keynote speaking, we talk with Mr. Lessig in our Free Culture Translation Project organized by SocialBrain.org. Please see link on these pages, you will find a lot of well-understanding information about Free Culture.
Actually the book is under CreativeCommons license which is a new concept of copyright license. The book we could download from internet for non-commercial purpose only. The type of CreativeCommons license for this book could be found in free-culture.cc site. The publisher penguin group is a pioneer supporter of open copyright. We believe that publish this book in UK or not is concerted by publisher, not Author.
The purpose of writing this email is to clarify the "Free Culture" meaning and point out the misunderstanding translation. Financial Times is widely honored from world wide readers and Medias. As readers, we expect an accurate and particular translation in Chinese version. We know that translation is not only directly from word surface, but also contain in meaning and extend from background knowledge.
Thanks and hope to see your professional opinions.
Kevin
184 Comments
04/ 9/2004
From BoingBoing
Jill Smith has begun a distributed audiobook project for my novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, whose new, liberal Creative Commons license allows for exactly this kind of mishegas (see the distributed audiobook project for Lessig's Free Culture for an example of how well this can work).
As
Keke mentioned a few days ago about our new project
Free Culture Chinese Edition, Cory comment on his post said he relicensed
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom under a Derivs-Sharealike license back in January. Base on the definition,
Share Alike license allow people
alter,
transform, or
build upon this work as wish. Hopefully SocialBrain.org should setup a new Project to translate
DOMK in Chinese Edition. Wow, I missed a chance in SXSW to talk about this with Cory.
5 Comments
04/ 3/2004
I design this logo for the Free Culture Tanslation Project initiate by Isaac Mao. yes, this logo is licensed by CreativeCommons NonCommercial License. Please feel free to use it except comerical purpose.
So far, 21 people have joined this collaborative project, memes appeared in lots of blogs. 12 chapters were assigned by contributors to translate. also, my friend shizhao post it to wikipedia, I believe this project will be broadcast extremely fast in blogosphere, obviously more and more people will getting involve in it. If any one want to join us please leave a comment over here inculde your email and URL.
10 Comments
04/ 1/2004
I got an excellent birthday gift from my dad: a Nokia 6600 smart phone. This phone currently is not available in US market. Also, he brought me a Bluetooth headphone which is an offical accessories for 6600. Wow, I can't wait to set it up.
I am using T-mobile wireless service right now which provided GSM network. It works with Tri-band and SIM card, its mean if a phone includes tri-band and SIM card slot, the only thing you need to do is put the SIM card into the phone and turn it on. It will work mostly. But if a smart phone you want to use with powerful function like online surfing, mobblogging etc. There's more configuration should be set it up. I had done some research and finally figure it out how to set 6600 for T-mobile network. If anyone has a chance to get this phone and also use T-Mobile service. You probably could follow configuration below to set it up, it's worked perfectly with my moblog.
PS: Absolutely, This is not a April fool's day joke! :)
Read More "Nokia 6600 for T-mobile"
1656 Comments
03/30/2004
I got an Email from Isaac Mao, he invited to me join a new project: Translate Lawrence Lessig's new book "Free Culture" to Chinese Edition. Isaac created a wiki page in SocialBrain.org website which is a non-profit research lab focus on social technology and activities in China. The first reaction pops up in my mind is the permission issue from the author, so I checked Lessig's weblog and saw his comment reply to Isaac's request.
A noncommercial translation is as permitted as an audio version.
Just few days after Larry announced that the book goes an online version licensed under CreativeCommons. There huge echoes were breeding over the internet, especially in blogosphere. Also there is collaborative audio version project launched by AKMA ( I first saw this on joi's).
AKMA has had the best idea of the significant interval: Since Larry Lessig allows anyone to record the audio of his book, Free Culture, for non-commercial purposes...
Project Abstract:
Free Culture - Chinese Edition
As the books sparked us a free digital culture trend, we attempted to implement this idea by using wiki, wiki is a symbol of free culture social software which could mostly collect social energy, we are expecting this collaborative project to let us translate and publish this book to a Chinese Edition, rapidly and effectively. Before our work, there are some points have to be nail down:
1> must follow author's authorization of this book: Licensed under CreativeCommons
2> all works are non-commercial purposes.
3> allow translate and public publish works.
I 'm not sure I translate exactly, so I will take totally responsibility if any misunderstanding caused by my translation. Anyway, actually I didn't have a chance to download this book yet, but I 'm so excited to join this project, Hopefully I could promote this on my blog to let more people know it. Free culture will brings me a brand-new experience I never had before.
8 Comments
Followed Joi's post, I donate some money to CreativeCommons through Paypal in order to get the Lawrence Lessig's great book "The Future of Ideas". Although I could get this book from local book store, I still think that donate some money to CC will be the best way to get this book in purpose. I mean I will buy this book after all so why not. Hopefully the shipping won't take a long time so I could ask Lawrence's signature in China Digital Future conference which host in UC berkeley at the end of April. My most expectative conference.
Also Lawrence's lunched online version of his new book "Free Culture", the work licensed under CreativeCommons. he provided a Bittorrent download.
Thanks to the lessons explained by others (Cory), and the courage of a great publisher (Penguin), Free Culture launches today with a free online version of the book, licensed under a Creative Commons license. You can get the book here, though at the moment, only the bittorrent version is apparently up. Later today, there will be a direct download available from the Free Culture site, and from the Amazon site.
8 Comments
Another Top 10 comes up! The 10 Dumbest Quotes of 2003 From About.
Let me quoted Hussein's Joke:
When U.S. interrogators asked Saddam Hussein how he was, he responded: "I am sad because my people are in bondage."
When offered a glass of water, he replied: "If I drink water I will have to go to the bathroom and how can I use the bathroom when my people are in bondage?"
7 Comments
12/11/2003
New apple store opened at Ginza Tokyo, This is a very impressive strategy to open apple store brings one of America’s most exciting new shopping experiences to Tokyo. Apple becomes to be a famous brand like PRADA, GUCCI and prmote their product to all over the world, Apple computer will be a symbol of people's identity.
Apple Store - Ginza Gallery
Longest Line - How japanese people crazy about APPLE.
Pictures of the Apple Store, Ginza - Via AntiPixel
6 Comments
12/ 2/2003
I observed a link best of CNN, This gallery collected all of best central Pictures in CNN homepage. Are they all the best? I didn't figure it out but one thing be sure is most of them are best graphics.
9 Comments
10/ 6/2003
USA Today: Worker blogs raise some company concerns
As a blogger, we should clear the base line on our writting in blog. as a company, Some concern is necessary for protect confidential information.
1 Comments
10/ 2/2003
Why Email can't as a subsititute for face-to-face conversation in management. Some 92% of executives surveyed by Accounttemps las year said manager often sent an e-mail message rather than meeting one-on-one,and 67% said they used it as a substitute for face-to-face conversation. This such "virtual" management is rampant on this time!
See Sending the Wrong Message From Fortune
10 Comments